William Winter

Governor of Mississippi

William Forrest Winter (February 21, 1923 – December 18, 2020) was an American attorney and politician who served as Governor of Mississippi from 1980 to 1984.

A member of the Democratic Party, he also served as Lieutenant Governor, State Treasurer, State Tax Collector, and in the Mississippi House of Representatives.

Born the son of a legislator and school teacher in Grenada, Mississippi, Winter was educated at the University of Mississippi.

He enlisted in the United States Army after graduation and assumed responsibility for training troops before being posted to the Philippines.

Upon his return to the United States, Winter enrolled in law school and became increasingly involved in politics, winning election to the Mississippi House of Representatives in 1947.

Re-elected twice, he supported bills aimed at governmental reform.Following an unsuccessful bid to become Speaker of the House, in April 1956 he was appointed to the lucrative post of State Tax Collector.

Feeling the office was wasteful, he convinced the legislature to abolish it and was elected State Treasurer in 1963.He also became the chair of the board of trustees of the Mississippi Department of Archives and History in 1969, which he served as until 2007.

Winter launched an unsuccessful campaign in the 1967 gubernatorial election.He was elected as lieutenant governor in 1971, and made another unsuccessful bid to become governor in 1975.

He was elected to the governorship in the 1979 election and during his tenure he supported civil service protections for state employees, reformed the judicial appointment process, removed racial considerations from state hiring process, and dealt with continuous budget deficits.

Mostly focused on education reform, he pushed the 1982 Education Reform Act through the legislature, which increased spending on public education and established public kindergartens.

Winter unsuccessfully ran for a seat in the United States Senate in the 1984 election.Later in his life he taught at the Harvard Institute of Politics, co-chaired Bill Clinton's presidential campaigns in the 1992 and 1996 elections, co-chaired Clinton's Advisory Board on Race, supported altering the flag of Mississippi, and was awarded the Profile in Courage Award before his death in 2020.

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